A turnout record in Massachusetts

11/27/12 11:57 AM EST

Massachusetts set a voter turnout record on Election Day, reports The Boston Globe:

Massachusetts residents voted in record numbers earlier this month, state officials said today, despite predictions that President Obama’s race against Republican Mitt Romney - a former governor - would not generate as much enthusiasm as the Democrat’s initial run for the presidency.

Secretary of the State William F. Galvin said the Nov. 6 turnout was 3,184,196 people – or 73.3 percent of registered voters - compared with 3,102,995 people who voted in 2008, the previous record.

Aside from the presidential race, which featured Romney as the GOP nominee and Massachusetts resident Jill Stein as the Green Party nominee, there were plenty of other factors driving turnout. Among them: a few more competitive House elections than usual, several statewide ballot questions and, most important, the high-profile Senate race between GOP Sen. Scott Brown and Democrat Elizabeth Warren.

The high home-state turnout didn’t work out so well for Romney, however. While he ran 2 percentage points better than John McCain in 2008, the former governor suffered the second-worst home state loss by a major party presidential nominee. In addition, the Romney-Paul Ryan ticket was the first since 1972 to fail to carry the nominees’ home states.